


Remembrance

by Princex_N



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Conversations, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 02:57:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10453407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: The Director and Angus mourn, together.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Johan like, doesn't have any friends in canon besides the Voidfish, so I wrote fics to make him friends? And Now I have to write them mourning him??

Lucretia goes to find him when everything is over and he looks so small that her heart shatters. 

The scene is faintly familiar, this is hardly the first time that she's walked in here to find him sprawled out in a corner of the room, and some part of her  _hopes_ that she'll be able to just walk up to him and shake him awake and remind him that he needs to eat and go to sleep in an actual bed. 

But she knows that that isn't the case. Not this time. 

For once, she doesn't entirely know what to do with herself. 

She, should go to him?? And do what?? 

(She had always _always_ feared that this day would come, but she never once thought that it could happen like this)

The Voidfish's tank is shattered, and there is still a layer of water and ichor on the ground. 

Does she want to see him like this? 

She doesn't think so. 

But she can't just  _leave_ him there. 

(He's already been left on his own for too long. Johan needs his space and likes to be left alone, but he also likes to pretend like he doesn't need to be around other people, but Lucretia knows better. Johan never did like to be left alone for  _too_ long, and he's been left alone for for too long this time.) 

"Johan!" comes an excited voice from behind her, and  _fuck_ she had not thought that her heart could break anymore, but it can and it  _hurts_. 

She twists around and scoops Angus McDonald up into her arms and marches them both out of the room. 

"Miss Director?" he asks, confused, "What are you doing? I wanted to talk to Johan." 

Her throat works, but she can't find the words and isn't sure that she'd be able to get them out anyway. She is quite used to death after all of these years, but informing people of what has happened never gets easier either. 

"Angus," she says slowly, and he stiffens in her arms. He pushes at her shoulders to lean back and get a look at her face, his eyes are wide and anxious behind his glasses. 

"What? What is it?," he asks, voice trembling, "What's wrong?" 

This had been hard enough to deal with before, on her own. Why did it have to get even worse? 

"What's wrong? He's okay right?! He's okay?" His voice is shaking and pitched and desperate and heartbreaking. 

She shakes her head. 

He  _wails_. 

He lurches forward and buries his face against her next and just cries, and Lucretia is forcibly reminded of the fact that he is only ten years old. He is so intelligent and well spoken that it's almost easy to forget how little he is, and he's had to cope with so much already, and now this? It's too much. 

It's too much to her; it's far too much for him. 

She maneuvers them both to the ground, and pulls him closer to her and holds him as he cries, because what else can she do? She is the adult, and she is the one in charge, but her own tears are threatening to overwhelm her and she isn't sure if allowing herself to cry will make Angus feel better or worse. Would it help to make his grief feel valid, or would it only unsettle him that an adult is not unshakable? Lucretia does not know much about children. 

Johan had been practically a child when she'd roped him into this, but he was never much like other children. 

Although, neither is Angus. 

Perhaps that's one of the reasons they got along so well. 

She doesn't know what to say, she doesn't particularly know if there is something  _to_ say in a situation like this. Johan isn't  _going_ to come back. He isn't like the others, and Lucretia is used to loss by now, but it never stops hurting. 

Things like this  _never_ seem to get easier. 

Angus quiets down eventually, wiping ineffectually at his face with his sweater vest and sniffling. "It's not fair," he says, voice small and rough. 

"It very rarely is," Lucretia agrees. She doesn't let him go, and he makes no attempt to get up. 

They stay there together until somebody else comes to pick up the body, and then she gets up and leaves with him before either of them have to see. 

-

Later on that night, Lucretia goes to find him again. 

He's sitting outside of the Voidfish's chambers, Johan's violin case sitting in his lap. 

"I didn't want it to get wet," he explains to her without looking up.

She nods, suddenly saddened by the reminder that the only thing she has left of Johan's music is the music box he'd handed out for Candlenights, which is still beautiful, but is not the same. 

"I think," she says slowly, because this feels delicate and meaningful in a way she can't quite explain, "that he would want you to keep it." 

Angus looks up at her in shock, "I couldn't," he protests, almost vehemently. 

Johan had always hated people touching his instruments, but Lucretia just smiles slightly. "I know that he was teaching you to play." She had walked in on them once, and had lingered in the doorway to watch without interrupting them.

Johan was not a particularly good teacher, but Angus was an excellent student who somehow managed to fill in the gaps on his own. But the fact that Johan had been willing to try in the first place, and had been willing to allow Angus to play  _his_ violin (despite the fact that it was too big for the younger boy) was meaningful in and of itself. 

Angus flushes a little, and then looks saddened.

"No one else around here is very interested in music," she continues, "and this is better than it just sitting in storage somewhere."

Angus looks back down at the case in his lap and drags his fingers back and forth over the rough texture of it. "Maybe," he admits, perhaps a little grudgingly, and then he sighs. "I just... I wish, he was still here." He's starting to look a little teary again, and Lucretia goes to sit next to him. 

"So do I," she tells him. It's a cold sort of comfort to know that Johan had never been afraid of death, or even particularly reluctant to face it, but that doesn't actually make her feel any better about these turns of events. Johan hadn't even known what the Hunger  _was_ ; if he had wanted to fight, he wouldn't have been able to, and that makes the situation even more unfair. But she knows one thing without a doubt. "He isn't here, but we are, and so it's our job to remember him." 

Johan had been terrified of being forgotten, and so Lucretia is going to ensure without a shadow of a doubt that that never happens. 

"Yeah," Angus agrees quietly, and then again a little louder, a little stronger. 

Remembering those who are gone is always an important task, but for Johan it's especially so, and the two of them can make sure that no one ever forgets Johan the Bard, the world's greatest violinist. 

**Author's Note:**

> I had to post this before the next episode comes out and Griffin hopefully unravels the content of this and my other fic by reviving my boy, and then we can all move on and pretend that none of this ever happened.  
> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com) and [my twitter](http://www.twitter.com/princex_n)


End file.
